The present invention relates to spiral coil binding systems and more particularly to plastic spiral coil binding holders and to an improved system for storing and feeding plastic spiral coil bindings to a binding machine.
Spiral coil bindings are used to bind books, calendars, etc. In metal spiral coil binding processes the metal wire coil is formed at the time of binding so that it is possible to achieve great speeds. However, presently there are no devices that permit the storing and automatic feeding of plastic coil spiral bindings to a binding machine. The major problem is that, unlike metal spiral coils, the manufacture of plastic spiral coil bindings has not been possible in continuous form. Therefore, it is necessary to manufacture a plastic monofilament and then produce specific lengths of plastic spiral coils on a coil making machine. The individual plastic spiral coils are then deposited in bulk into a packing container. When the plastic spiral coils are to be used for binding, each individual plastic spiral coil must be taken singly from the container and hand fed into a binding machine. It will be readily seen that this substantially reduces the speed that can be achieved in the binding process and increases its cost.
There exists German Gebrauchsmuster No. G 94-04-459.7 issued on Mar. 16, 1994. This patent is directed to a carrier for holding metal binding combs which are used to bind books, etc. In that German patent, a carrier sheet of paper or the like has a plurality of holding tabs which are cut into the sheet and the metal binding combs are pushed through and under the holding tabs and is held in place on the sheet by the holding tabs. One drawback of the structure shown in that patent is that should the holding tabs rip or be otherwise damaged the binding comb cannot be held in place on the carrier sheet. In addition, if the binder comb is not pushed through the carrier sheet a sufficient distance the holding tabs will not be able to hold the binder comb on the carrier sheet.